Madame Gill O’Teen Club for Treasonous Gents, RSVP

Since we all lost our jobs and/or can’t find work, we’ve decided to form a club. A ruthlessly exclusive affair, by strict invitation, only for the very top of the top. We are Madame Gill O’Teen Club for Treasonous Gents and we have a dream, a list and way too much time to spare.

Our ideological basis is diverse, but we all coincide on the club motto: “If the French Did It, Why Can’t We?” I mean, we’re in Spain, right next to France, AND we have a Bourbon on the throne, just like they did. Maybe if they hadn’t been so half-assed in their efforts, we wouldn’t be in this predicament. Quenelle, hein?

We are in the preparatory stages now, there is much to be done. Diego, our resident sculptor-poet, is working on the wooden structure in his garage, using discarded parts he picks off the street to build “a bridge between eros and thanatos”, whatever that means. Pedro, who is officially unemployed but works in his father-in-law’s repair shop, is arranging the metal moving parts with help of his ironsmith buddies from the medieval fair.

The plans were drafted by Raúl the engineer, who grows ganja in his mom’s apartment to pay the rent, based on “La Bête”, said to have attained full deleverage 7,653 times without fail in the fourth district of Paris between 1793 and 1794. The club emblem, put together by Florencio who studied graphic design and freelances as he can, will be engraved in the headpiece by his wife Ana who makes orgonite to sell on eBay.

Paloma, who studied criminology and got top grades in the public service access test only to have her spot handed to the director’s halfwit nephew, is working hard on coding our definition of “Treason”, “Gents”, “Madame Gill O’Teen Special Nape Massage” and other terms in proper legalese to add solemnity to the preambles and keep in strict compliance with the Laws of Gravity, Entropy and Unintended Consequences.

The rest of us, meanwhile, debate criteria, discuss charges and ponder the finer details, like regulations on waste disposal (we initiated contacts with Save the Scavengers but they told us vultures don’t eat their own), how to best position the live feed webcams and, of course, the costumes. We’re striving for appropriate set and setting for our post-retro-OMFG vibe and feel that britches, petticoats and floured wigs may be hackeneyed but not entirely amiss. Certainly a certain carnivalesque je ne sais quoi is considered more appropriate from the mass entertainment point of view.

proud Spanish vultures will not eat their own

And then there is the invitation list. This is an ongoing subject of heated debate between the “less is more” and “more is more” supporters, with current majority favoring the former model which posits that one severance at the top is worth a million at the bottom. We know who they are and how they have betrayed us, and although only the most deserving of treasonous gents will receive an actual bona fide holy macaroni golden ticket invitation, the memo will ripple far and wide.

We are just normal folks with edgy needs and healthy desires. All of us should really be somewhere else doing something different, but we seem to have lost our way or found another. So make way for the mystery dame, the black widow, the masked maiden who will apply her tender ministrations to our guests of honor. Who plays the part doesn’t matter because she’s a personification, an idea, a principle. Kind of like Justice, but without the blindfold and a holding a lever instead of a sword. Some will find her attractive, others matronly and a few will find her downright scary, and none would be wrong, for all these aspects are part of the Kindly O’Teen.

We are Madame Gill O’Teen Club for Treasonous Gents and we don’t repeat history, we rhyme with it. So go ahead and take our invitation to step up for your decap… ahem, your free demonstration. If you wish to leave your mark on time, bring a neck and we’ll make it rhyme, so that history will tell what was seen, the day the gents met O’Teen.